208 Kew : Snares or Snap-nets of Triangle Spiders. 



Having decided as to the location of the entangled insect, the 

 spider, Wilder continues, runs along- the nearest radius ; and 

 sometimes, when the prey is small, or hopelessly entangled, merely 

 pulls it up by means of the lines about it, and carries it to her 

 accustomed station under the trap-line to be eaten. But more 

 often the creature adopts a method of securing- her prey believed 

 by this observer to be peculiar to Hyptiotes : 



Before reaching the apex (A), she cuts with her jaws the apex-line, but, 

 as she keeps constant hold in front of the cut by her first and second pairs 

 of feet, and has a communication in the rear through the line which most 

 spiders always attach to a point behind them, she does not fall, neither is 

 the net loosened beyond a certain limit ; it usually seems to recoil about an 

 inch ; this recoil tends to entangle the prey like the original snaps of the 

 net. The spider again advances, gathers the radii together and cuts them 

 all, still keeping the line out behind ; again the net recoils and collapses. 

 Again she advances and cuts the radii; the net is now hardly distinguish- 

 able as such, and is falling together about the devoted fly ; the spider now 

 spreads her legs, gathers the net between them and flings it like a blanket 

 over her victim ; struggles are now in vain ; but, ' to make assurance 

 doubly sure,' the spider grasps the mass, transfers it to her third pair, and 

 with them turns it over and over as a ball, hanging the while by her front 

 legs, and, with the hinder pair used now alternately, drawing out from the 

 expanded spinners broad sheets of silk which, relatively to the power of 

 the fly, are like steel bands upon a man. Having in this way reduced the 

 prey to a rounded ball, in which its limbs are hardly distinguishable, the 

 spider takes it in her jaws and mounts to her place. 



Thus, whenever this procedure is adopted, and in fact g-enerally, 

 the entire snare, made as it is with much labour and skill, is 

 wholly destroyed in the capture of a sing-le insect.* 



McCook, also, has written on the manner in which the snare 

 is used. One g-athers that the just-quoted account of the way 

 in which an insect is approached agrees with this author's 

 experiences ; but he does not reg-ard the process as peculiar to 

 Hyptiotes. Epeirids, he says, behave in a similar manner, and 

 in capturing-, swathing-, and cutting out an insect they often 

 destroy a sector of the snare consisting, sometimes, of as 

 many as four radii : Hyptiotes , possessing only such a sector, 

 destroys the whole snare. In many respects P/icCook's observa- 

 tions afford a general confirmation of those of Wilder ; there 

 are, however, certain points of difference in the two accounts. 

 Examining the spider with a lens in its position under the trap- 

 line, McCook found that between the second and third pairs of 

 legs the line was usually taut, not slack as shown by W T ilder, 

 the slack being accumulated, in a considerable coil, between the 



Wilder, 1873, I.e. ; 1875, I.e. 



Naturalist, 



